Category: literary life

From the first few pages of J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K.

K had never been into the flat before. He found it in chaos. In a wash of water driven through the windows by high winds lay broken furniture, gutted mattresses, fragments of glass and crockery, withered pot-plants, sodden bedding and carpeting. A paste of cake flour, breakfast cereal, sugar, cat litter and earth stuck to his shoes. In the kitchen the refrigerator lay on its face, its motor still purring, a yellow scum leaking past its hinges into the half-inch of water on the tiled floor. Rows of jars had been swept off the shelves; there was a reek of wine. On the gleaming white walls someone had written in oven cleaner: TO HEL.

What gets me is the “the half-inch” of water.

More sad news: Qurratulain Hayder, whose 1959 novel A River of Fire was favorably compared to Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, has also passed away.

I found out the terrible news by reading Maud Newton’s blog this morning: Grace Paley has passed away. The New York Times has an obit as well.

On July 26, French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech in Dakar, addressed not to his Senegalese hosts, but rather to “African youth” in its entirety. The speech was a bizarre mix of neo-colonial clichés and passionate promises of help. The trouble in Africa, as in the Middle East, has always been the sheer number of people so eager to help, and all out of altruism, of course.

Among other things, Sarkozy said that slavery happened, but it’s all in the past; that he did not want to speak of repentance, but of the future; that colonialism was not all bad because the French built schools, roads, and bridges. (Whenever someone claims that the French built schools in Morocco, I always like to point out that in 44 years of their presence in my homeland, they managed to graduate fewer than 50 people from university; so enough about the ‘benefits’ of colonization already.) Sarkozy then claimed that the African farmer knows only the “eternal beginning of time, marked by the endless repetition of the same gestures and the same words.” (Three guesses as to who will help Africans enter, at long last, into history.) He added that France would help all African nations who wish to have democracy. And then he went on to meet with Omar Bongo of Gabon, one of the oldest dictators in Africa. (40 years and going!) It was, in short, the kind of speech that really made me wonder how French imperialism, both military and economic, is not talked about in the West to the same extent as, for instance, British or American interventions.

Needless to say, Sarkozy’s speech was severely criticized in Senegalese newspapers, and in the African press at large. His speech drew a response from the African literary community, as well. In Libération last week, Raharimanana (of Madagascar), Boubacar Boris Diop (of Sénégal), Abderrahman Beggar (of Morocco), Patrice Nganang (of Cameroon), Koulsy Lamko (of Chad), Kangni Alem (of Togo), and Jutta Hepke (of Germany) addressed an open letter to the president, in which they ask him to “stop fraternizing with the gravediggers of our hopes” and invite him to have a true debate.

A day in the life of George Saunders, a few years from now:

Syracuse, New York, where I live, is famous for its brutal winters. We’re having one now. Although it’s been a strange year, weatherwise, given “global warming” and all. (Thanks Mr. Gore, for inventing that!) Yesterday it was a nice mild summer day, about 150 degrees – I’d just come inside from mopping up the puddle that was formerly Keith, our postman – when suddenly, I could feel it in my bones, that good old “Ah, winter’s a-coming!” feeling.

And I was right.

Suddenly the temperature dropped – three hundred degrees in one hour, a local record! It was so lovely, I couldn’t resist putting my work aside and donning special clothing purchased from NASA and taking a stroll through this “winter wonderland.” It was gorgeous: the neighborhood cats, converted to ice-cats in mid-stride, four pert little robins literally frozen to death on a clothesline, little beaks open in mid-peep.

I guess I’m just a sucker for the “pastoral.” Across the street, here was old Mrs Clark, bending to pick up her newspaper, grouchy look frozen on her face, reaching back absent-mindedly to scratch her – it was really too bad. I liked Mrs Clark. I mean, yes, she was always complaining – about Mr Clark, about the president not signing the Kyoto treaty, the kids running across her lawn, the way our lawmakers embrace pseudo-science to protect the big oil companies: a real malcontent – but still, you hate anyone to be instantaneously frozen, especially right out there where you can see them, cluttering up your beautiful winter view.

More Saundersian genius here. The piece originally appeared in Neue Zürcher Zeitung in March, and was reprinted on signandsight.com last weekend.

Dan Olivas reviews Dahlia Season, the debut collection of stories by Long Beach author Myriam Gurba for the El Paso Times.